


Seeking Solace

by Raduzhok



Category: Forever Knight
Genre: Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-05-05
Updated: 2015-05-05
Packaged: 2018-03-29 04:19:30
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 651
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/3882043
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Raduzhok/pseuds/Raduzhok
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>In the 24/7 world, a 500 year old vampire hunts for the quiet places to make his own</p>
            </blockquote>





	Seeking Solace

Normally, Vachon loved four past midnight, the wee hours of the morning. It was the quiet time when the streets were mostly empty. Of course, that was how Toronto had been and many of the cities in Europe also, and definitely before the last half of the 20th Century arrived with its ‘open all night’ mantra. The City that Never Sleeps lived up to its name. New York was that icon of the 24/7 lifestyle and tended to annoy Vachon more often than not, lately. In fact, the city afforded almost no solitude and Vachon loved his solitude, where he could think about things. Yes, call it reminiscing if you must, but there’s something to be said for nostalgia when you’ve lived almost five centuries. Or maybe that is what old age did for a body, living or dead?

It had taken him nearly six months to find the perfect place to wind down after a night at The Pulse. Unlike the majority of his brethren, Vachon seemed drawn to churches. None hardly entered them, and while Vachon avoided the ones with a thriving business and population, he did make it a hobby to find the old condemned buildings, most in the style of old world European architecture. Now those were works of art. None of this modernistic crap for Vachon.

Even as a mortal, Javier Vachon spent time in church in his native country, Spain. It never had anything to do with religion, for he had grown weary of the teachings almost from the moment he was sent to classes for confirmation. During the years leading up to his first communion he was too young to even consider this wasn’t a valid ideology. In Vachon’s mind, later, as he headed into puberty, he found it hard to buy into any of the dogma. Still, after mass, during the week, when nobody else was in the chapel, Vachon would go and listen to the silence. It was, in deed, golden.

After his Crossing in the 16th Century, Vachon found unlikely homes in the occasional vacant church, a decaying structure in poor ghetto-ish neighborhoods of most cities. He maintained the tradition over the centuries and when the 1900s settled into place, during the last half of that hundred year period, places of worship found their little ‘sheep’ heading for the hills and the churches became even more alluring.

The cavernous palaces with maze-like twists and turns, housing aging hold-outs to the exodus of flocks seeking more modern explanations to the big questions of life were a connection to something which still resided inside him that was the mortal Javier Vachon. Or perhaps he was just an esthete. Even within the resurgence of new found faith seekers near the turn of the millennium, it was often to non-denominational sects, leaving the still magnificent guardians of the old ways vacant halls which echoed memories of a past most either wanted to forget, or worse, which were no longer a permanent fixture of a society in flux. Vachon made it a pilgrimage to find the ones which needed to be graced with the energy of the Undead.

New York, for a ‘Modern’ world, held some exquisite homage to the elegance of Europe’s Middle Ages. This one, nestled between towering skyscrapers on The Big Apple’s Fifth Avenue, not too far out of Midtown, was a gem. The scent of old velvet mingling with polished, intricately carved wood and candle incense made this edifice a stately manor. The spires which begged to be graced with Gargoyles held their own next to the towers of glass that reflected the world outside back unto itself. At first, Vachon remained outside, perched on the ridged roof, but the lights and noise from the surrounding world distracted him. It was in an attic room which held the relics of the cathedral’s own history that the vampire sought, and found, solace.


End file.
